


Trial By Fire

by bisexualamy



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-24 19:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12019545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualamy/pseuds/bisexualamy
Summary: After landing on a plane that's been self-isolated for centuries, the IPRE crew risk being put to death for violating their strict boundary laws. Their only chance of survival is to split into groups and complete a personalized, immersive test proving their moral and personal worth, with life or death stakes.This is written to be cycle 53 of the Stolen Century arc.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This was largely inspired by my love of science fiction, puzzle games, convoluted plots, and YA tropes. I love The Adventure Zone honestly more than I can describe here, and I've been wanting to write something for it for a while now. Here's my first attempt.
> 
> Love/feedback/hatemail can go in the comments below or to my tumblr @transjeanluc. Please let me know what you think. These characters mean a lot to me and I wanted to try and do them justice.

The Starblaster’s descent was so fast that initially, everyone in the IPRE crew assumed that the ship was going down. Taako even shouted to Davenport and asked how they could possibly be crashing this soon after jumping planes, not letting the potential of an untimely death hold his tongue from making one last quip. Davenport, still at the helm, didn’t have an answer for him, because they weren’t crashing. It was as if something was artificially speeding up their descent, like a large magnet on the ground, pulling them full force towards the plane below, and there was nothing he could do about it.

They’d been gaining speed for several seconds, and it had now reached the point where a cursory glance out the window meant nothing anymore. The ship’s acceleration was so fast, and the plane below was so quickly approaching them, that the sky around them and everything underneath them was just a blur. It didn’t help that this plane was covered in a thick blanket of clouds, which at this point, had enveloped the Starblaster completely. Davenport tried to keep the ship steady, his hands grasping the helm firmly, but the controls weren’t responding to him. It was if the ship was frozen, and something was yanking it out of the sky.

“Everybody, brace for impact!” Davenport shouted. Lup, Barry, and Taako grabbed onto various parts of the ship walls. Magnus grabbed Lucretia. Merle dove under a table. But, just as they were sure they were nearing the ground, the ship stopped falling. Davenport heard the landing gear deploy without his instruction, and in a moment, everything was quiet. Merle poked his head out from under the table.

“Is everything okay?” he asked. He looked at Davenport, who was staring confusedly at the Starblaster’s controls.

“I… didn’t do that,” Davenport said.

As he said that, the Starblaster’s exit door open, and the ramp came down. All seven of them turned to look at it. Magnus let go of Lucretia and started towards the door.

“Where are you going?” Lucretia asked.

“Well, someone helped us land,” Magnus said. “Time to find out who.”

“So you saw something take control of our ship and you want to go and meet it?” Taako asked. Instead of answering, Magnus walked past him and started down the exit ramp. Merle and Davenport followed and then, with a sigh, Lucretia gathered up her journals and walked down the exit ramp after them.

“There’s no way I’m going out there,” Taako said. He looked to Lup, and noticed Barry doing the same thing. She grabbed Barry’s hand and gave Taako a shove.

“C’mon,” she said. “Cautious doesn’t look good on you.”

When Taako, Lup, and Barry had exited the Starblaster, they saw their four crewmates spread out in a bright, white room that seems to have no definitive boundaries, and no clear exit. Lucretia was taking notes and drawing sketches of what she could make out around her, while Magnus, Merle, and Davenport were investigating, all in different corners, just how far this room stretched. When Taako, who was trailing behind Lup and Barry, finally stepped off the ramp, it retracted by itself. As the exit closed, the seven of them could see two words appear in red block letters in the white space in front of them.

“BOUNDARY VIOLATION”

“Boundary violation?” Taako asked incredulously. “Whoever you are,  _ you  _ dragged us down here!”

The two words disappeared, and more words appeared in their place. A woman’s voice began speaking, and as she talked, the words she said displayed one after the other where the red text had been. The voice was light, but not cheerful, as she plainly stated the text in front of them.

“By entering into our plane’s airspace, you have violated our centuries old agreement with the other planes in our system. Our strict policy against outsiders extents to members of all planes, from all systems. By violating our boundaries, you have breached this agreement, and are subject to penalty.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Lucretia saw Magnus tense up, like he expected armed guards or security officers to appear out of the expanse of white light around them, and she put one hand on his shoulder to calm him. With the other, she wrote down every word appearing in front of her in her own personal shorthand.

“You have been brought to this station to be dealt that penalty,” the voice and text continued simultaneously. “Should you wish to enter our plane and join our society, you must first take our personal aptitude test. The test will show you if you are morally fit and personally worthy enough to join us. Those who refuse to undergo the test will be executed immediately. What is your choice?”

The seven of them all looked at each other, a few of their eyes going back to the words in front of them just to make sure that they were reading correctly.

“This is ridiculous,” Taako said. “I don’t know about all of you, but I’m not going to take some test just because a bunch of floating words and a disembodied voice tells me to.”

He started walking back towards the Starblaster, but was stopped a few feet from it by a forcefield that sent him reeling backwards. He tried sticking his hands out towards the ship, but it was met with red energy and a zap of electricity. 

“It doesn’t look like we have much of a choice,” Magnus said, turning from looking at Taako to face Davenport. “Between the seven of us, we’re bound to pass any test they can come up with, anyway.”

“But what about the Hunger?” Merle asked. “How do we know how long this test is going to take, or if they’ll even listen to us about the Hunger if we pass?”

“We might be risking our lives for them to ignore our warnings completely,” Taako agreed.

“But if we don’t take the test, we’ll all die here,” Lup said. “I agree with Magnus. The only way out of this one is through it. Besides, it doesn’t appear that wherever these words are can hear us. That, or they’re not able to, or choose not to, respond to us. We couldn’t warn anyone now if we tried.”

Davenport looked around at his crew and then, giving a little nod, looked up at the words and said, “we choose to take the test.”

As he said this, three glowing, blue-green circles appeared on the ground in front of them.

“Divide yourselves into groups of 2-3,” the voice said, “and assemble yourselves onto these transport pads.”

The realization that they had to split up ran like a chill through the group. Taako and Lup instinctively took a step closer to each other, and when Lup realized that Barry hadn’t moved, she grabbed his shirt sleeve and yanked him closer to her. Magnus grabbed Lucretia’s hand, and Davenport and Merle made a moment of eye contact. The words and the voice waited until all three groups got on their respective transport pads before continuing.

“Each test consists of a single test chamber with one final exit door. If you exit the chamber, you’ve passed the test. Each test also contains challenges specific to each team member that you must pass in order to continue on. You must complete the entire test, and you cannot communicate with anyone but your teammates throughout the test. Tampering with the test, circumventing challenges, or breaking any other rule inside the test chamber will result in immediate disqualification, punishable by death. Should one of your team members die, you must continue on without them in order to finish the test, or forfeit, and be executed.”

The writing paused, as if to give everyone time to process this information. No one made a sound.

“You will now be separated and scanned, and an individualized testing chamber will be generated for each team.”

And just as those words appeared in front of them, the transport pads activated, and the three teams were on their own.


	2. Magnus and Lucretia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to some of my ideas about the nature of Magnus's and Lucretia's related backstory from [this post.](http://taahko.tumblr.com/post/164697989121/the-raw-powerful-concept-of-magnus-and-lucretia)

The first thing Magnus and Lucretia felt was the wind. It whipped their hair around their heads and against their faces, and they could hear it whistling through what sounded like trees or tall buildings. Magnus was the first one to open his eyes, and when he did, he tapped Lucretia on the shoulder. In front of them was a mountain range, peaks so tall they extended into the clouds. Magnus turned around to how the two of them had gotten here, and saw that behind them was a wall, metallic and wholly out of place for this scene, stretching as far as he could see in both directions. It surface was completely smooth, with no evidence of an entrance. He ran his hands along it to see if he that could tell him how they arrived, but it was if they’re appeared in front of it.

Lucretia instinctively went to her pocket to grab one of her journals, but what she found instead was a scroll made of thick canvas and tied with a rope. She searched the rest of her pockets, and found that this was the only thing she had. She grit her teeth. Whoever that disembodied voice was was definitely going to hear from her if she didn’t get her journals back.

“What that?” Magnus asked. He saw the scroll when he turned back to face Lucretia, and pointed to it.

“It just appeared in my pocket,” she said. “It’s probably a clue or a task. Let’s find out for certain.”

She pulled on one end of the rope and the knot came undone. When she unrolled the scroll, she saw it was a hand drawn map. The markings were a bit crude, looking as if they’d been done in charcoal, but overall, the map itself was very detailed. Their location was clearly marked in the bottom right corner, and in the top left corner was a drawing of a door. It soon became clear to the two of them that the way out of here was through this mountain range, or at least, that’s what the test wanted them to do.

As soon as Magnus realized this, Lucretia could see his demeanour change in a way that had become familiar to her. He pulled his shoulders back and his eyes became more focused, scanning their immediate area for supplies, food, anything to aid with the task ahead.

“Crossing a mountain range of this size could take anywhere from four days to a week,” he said. “We need to be ready for any delays or complications. I’d be genuinely surprised if this test was rooting for us to succeed.”

He began to walk around their immediate area, looking for anything that could help with what he was certain was going to be a difficult trip. The ground they were standing on was rocky and cracked. He stomped his foot on the ground and unsettled a little dust. It was as if everything around them was dead.

“Maybe nothing around here is useful on purpose,” Lucretia said. Her eyes also scanned the immediate area, looking at the metallic wall behind them, fading on all sides into the fog. “I’d be willing to bet that, if we get to have any supplies to start, they’ll further along this wall.”

They split up, trailing along the wall in either direction. After a few minutes of searching, Lucretia heard Magnus call her name. She rushed over to him, suddenly regretting their decision to separate, until she saw him proudly displaying two medium-sized rucksacks. He threw her one, and she staggered back a step as she caught it. The bag was heavier than she’d expected.

“I found these hidden in some brush around here,” he said as she put hers on. “There’s some dried food and a few containers of water inside. Even a couple of matches. Definitely not enough to make it through the trip, even if we ration it, but enough for a few days. That’ll give us some buffer time as we look for more supplies.”

He slung the rucksack onto his back with ease and then gave Lucretia a wide, excited smile.

“You ready?” he asked.

Lucretia looked back to the mountain range to try and hide her fear.

“I guess,” she said, her nervousness evident. Magnus came up to her and clapped her on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You have me! Together, we can do this.”

***

The IPRE crew dealt with age relatively. They’d been going through cycle after unaging cycle, death after death, for so long, that nobody quite knew what their ages were anymore. So, instead, it was Davenport was older than Merle, Lucretia was younger than Barry, and the twins existed at the intersection between youth and agelessness. Magnus was the youngest, but barely so compared to Lucretia, and in their new lives, two or three years meant nothing.

In Lucretia’s first journal, she had written down that Magnus was eighteen at their press conference, the day before their mission to the stars. She remembered looking at him then and wondering how someone could have such a clear sense of purpose and duty so young. How someone his age could have such a strong instinct to protect. She now realized that a lot of that was the desire for heroics that most young people had, but Magnus’s took a specific form. Rushing headlong into danger was still his forte, but what started as a desire to be remembered, to die in a blaze of glory, became another representation of his gentle heart. 

She saw it during this mission, in the way he carved out extra footholds for her in cliffsides instead of just scaling a surface she knew he could, in the way he double-checked safe looking ledges for stability anyway, and then walked a step in front of her to make sure there were no surprises down their path. He could feel her nervousness like his own, and instead of viewing it as a nuisance, he respected it. He might’ve still looked eighteen, but his conscience was older.

Their day of walking stretched hours into the night. Lucretia’s feet began to ache and blister, and her diligence about rationing her water was becoming more and more at odds with her dry and sore throat. She noticed the trip wearing Magnus down too, as his pace slowed and his gaze became less sharp, and as stars began to appear above them, Magnus stopped walking altogether. He froze, putting a hand up to signal Lucretia to also stop and stay quiet, before leaving the path and walking down a small hill into the short, yellowing bushes that grew in groups on the mountain.

She followed him as he walked, his footfalls surprisingly quiet for his stocky body, until they came to a cave. It was carved into the side of the mountain, by time or by animal, they didn’t know. Magnus smiled.

“I knew I heard something scurrying around here,” he said. “Wait outside. I’ll check if it’s empty.”

He crept into the cave, using one of his matches to create a torch out of some brambles he yanked off of the plants below his feet. After a minute or two of silence, he came back out.

“All clear,” he said proudly. “If we build a fire in there, nothing will come in to try and attack us. I hope whatever lives here don’t mind us setting it on into the wild for one night.” 

So that was what they did. As Magnus collected firewood, Lucretia collected more dry stalks to feed to Magnus’s torch so they wouldn’t have to use another match to start their campfire. Once they had a small mound of wood and dry leaves, Lucretia ignited the pile, and within a few minutes, they had a roaring fire going. It only took a few more minutes for them to start on their meal of dried meat and fruit, which Magnus seemed to enjoy much more than she did. Lucretia was more thirsty than anything else, but she kept up her diligence, and restricted herself to half a container of water for this meal and the rest of the night. When she looked over at Magnus, she saw him carefully emptying his rucksack, laying all of his materials and the map out in front of him, and staring at them intently as he chewed. When he looked up to check on the fire, he saw Lucretia staring at him.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked.

Lucretia turned her gaze to the fire, staring at it until the light hurt her eyes and the afterimage of the flames was floating in her line of sight.

“This really was a no-win scenario, wasn’t it?” she said finally. “We can’t control what plane we jump to. So, we showed up, tripped some alarm, and suddenly some being we can’t even see is playing with our lives.”

“We’ve dealt with less than friendly locals before.”

“Yeah, but we’ve always had some kind of control,” Lucretia continued. “We can’t  _ talk _ to whatever is testing us. We can’t reason with it; we can’t even see it. What right does it have to test our ‘moral fitness’ and ‘personal worthiness’ as if it knows us? Who made this society judge, jury, and executioner?”

After a moment, Magnus got up and walked over to Lucretia, sitting down next to her on her side of the fire.

“I agree with you,” he said. “It’s not fair to punish us for the rules of a plane we’ve never visited before, but if we didn’t make this choice, we would’ve all died. Keeping people safe from the Hunger is more important than standing up to the injustice on this plane.”

“You’ve never been one to pick your battles before,” Lucretia said.

“Well, I’ve matured,” Magnus said, straightening up a little. He flashed a beaming smile at her. “I’m practically in my seventies.”

Lucretia laughed, giving Magnus a little shove, but the joy soon faded. She looked down at the cave floor and said, “are you nervous for what your challenge is going to be?”

“Yes,” Magnus said without hesitation. Lucretia looked up at him while he continued speaking. “I’m scared before every fight, but bravery isn’t a lack of fear. It’s looking that fear in the eye and still not letting it stop you. Fear wins when it prevents you from fighting a battle that matters.”

Lucretia said nothing. Magnus put his arm around her and said, “besides, in here, we have each other’s backs. There’s nothing they can throw at us that we can’t solve together.”

***

They spent the next day trying to make as much headway as possible. They ate and drank as they walked, only stopping once when Magnus recognized some plants that were safe to eat, and again when the two of them investigated a faint noise that sounded like running water, and found a small stream half a mile from the path. They slept in caves temporarily taken over from animals, rationing their matches to start fires that kept them safe and warm at night.

Lucretia’s body began to ache to the point where she stopped feeling the pain. Her feet, blistered and bloody from spending hours walking over rough terrain, went numb by the end of the second day. Magnus, despite the face of encouragement he put on and his experience with difficult trips, was even beginning to look worn down by day three. It seemed like this mountain range stretched on forever, and the scenery never changed color. Lucretia knew that they weren’t going at as fast a pace as Magnus could by himself, but they still should’ve seen significant progress by now. Despite this, on the morning of the fourth day of their journey, they still left their most recent cave to see the same scene they’d woken up to the last couple of mornings: endless mountains, fog, and no door in sight.

After a few hours of walking, as the sun climbed higher towards noon, Magnus abruptly stopped. They were on a thin path winding its way up one of the mountains, a drop to their left, a wall to their right.

“Is something wrong?” Lucretia asked him. A cursory glance at their location told her that this was the least ideal place to run into trouble. Magnus quickly put up a hand to signal her to be quiet. He scanned the area with his eyes, unmoving, his muscles tensed, when seemingly out of nowhere, a wolf came walking around the bend in front of them, blocking their path.

The wolf’s eyes met Magnus’s, and when it saw him, its body also tensed. It was as if it was ready to pounce on him at a moment’s notice. Lucretia froze, barely breathing, as she saw two more wolves come out of the brush. They flanked the first wolf, as if they’d been previously assigned positions, their yellow eyes all fixed on Magnus.

Magnus slowly handed Lucretia his rucksack and motioned for her to carefully back off to the side. He spoke to the wolves in a soft, low voice.

“We don’t want to get into any trouble,” he said, crouching down to get more of the wolves’ level. “We just want to keep walking.”

The wolf in the front snarled, baring its teeth.

“We don’t want to fight,” Magnus said. He crouched lower, trying to make himself as small and non-threatening as possible. He took a step closer to the wolves, and the one in front pounced.

It made a go for Magnus’s neck, but Magnus saw it coming a second before its jaw tried to take a bite out of him, and managed to block the attack. He threw it off of him, but the wolf quickly regained its footing and turned back to him. It pounced again, this time going for Magnus’s stomach, and Magnus tried to wrestle it to the ground.

As Magnus and the wolf were struggling with each other, Lucretia turned her attention to the two unoccupied wolves. To her surprise, they were sitting next to each other, watching Magnus and the first wolf fight each other. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say they were patiently observing the scene, and if they had noticed her standing motionless off to the side, they’d decided to ignore her. 

She watched the two wolves more intently, and for a split second saw one of them flicker. They sat so still Lucretia could’ve easily assumed they were stone, but there, again, one of the wolves flickered and for half a moment, fazed out of reality.

“They’re not real,” she muttered to herself. With a chill, she realized that this was Magnus’s challenge, and by the looks of it, he was failing.

She called out to Magnus to tell him what she had discovered, but as she said his name, one of the sitting wolves turned on her. When Magnus looked to her, he saw a wolf in front of her, ready to pounce, and assumed she was calling for help.

He didn’t hesitate.

He lunged for the wolf’s back, trying to put it off balance enough that Lucretia could get away, but the wolf was expecting him. It turned to him at the last second and sprung on Magnus, wrestling him to the ground. Magnus tried to kick it off of him while his arms went to protect his face and ribs, but he was thrashing around too much. His focus wasn’t on this fight, but instead on trying to get the wolf off of him as fast as possible. In his mind, Lucretia was on her own with two angry wolves, and now that he was occupied, they could be attacking her.

Instead, the two wolves were again, sitting off to the side, watching the third member of their pack diligently. Lucretia tried to shout again to Magnus and tell him to stop, that it was a trap, but he didn’t hear her words. Instead, he assumed she was once again calling for help, and fought even harder.

He didn’t realize how close they were to the cliff’s edge.

With a burst of energy he made another go at the wolf, causing both of them to tumble straight over the side of the mountain path. Lucretia screamed, her fingers tightening around the straps of Magnus’s rucksack as if that would stop him from falling. She ran to the edge to see if he had managed to hold on, but when she looked over, there was nothing below her but fog. She turned to look back at the two wolves who’d been sitting patiently, and just as she turned around, they faded away. Now that Magnus had failed his challenge, they were no longer necessary.

Lucretia screamed again, but this time, there was anger in it. She felt tears pricking her eyes and fought the urge to hit the mountain face next to her, knowing that she’d only hurt her hand. He thought she needed saving, and he’d died for it.

It took a few moments for Lucretia to realize that her whole body was shaking, with fear or anger, she didn’t know. She sat on the ground, her back against the rock face, and stared outwards towards the edge of the mountain where Magnus and the wolf had fallen. The wind whistled loudly around her and chilled her body, goosebumps forming on her arms, but she didn’t move. The sun stayed high in the sky overhead, and though she felt like she sat there for hours, it didn’t move, like it was waiting to see what she would do next. But Lucretia already knew what she had to do. She couldn’t guarantee that anyone from any of the other groups was going to make it out of the test alive. If she wanted to make sure Magnus came back, she’d have to take care of it herself.

She stood up, shoulders back, and slung one rucksack over each of her shoulders. Their replenished supplies of food and water weighed down each bag, and she decided that she was now only going to stop to sleep for a few hours each night. The map in Magnus rucksack showed that it was a straight shot to the door, so forward she went, winding her way around the mountain. She walked until she felt as if her feet would buckle underneath her, hours after the sun had already set, and when she found a safe clearing to sleep in, she collapsed onto the ground. With the rucksacks as a pillow, she slept dreaming of the end of this year, when Magnus would be back by her side, and all seven of them would be together again on the Starblaster, far away from this awful plane and their sadistic challenges.

When she woke up early the next morning, she continued walking. Hours passed by as minutes as she trained her eyes forward, but beyond that, it was as if the terrain was changing faster than it ever had before. What once was four days of the same landscape began to rapidly change. The path started gradually sloping downward, but Lucretia didn’t notice until she saw that the plants that grew on either side of her were getting taller and greener. Soon, she could see trees in the distance, and the air around her began to warm.

When she saw a metallic glint in the distance, at first, she didn’t believe it was true. But, as she continued to walk towards it, soon, a metallic wall, like the one they’d started in front of, came into focus. And, positioned in the center of it, intersecting with her path, was a door.

She took off running, practically tripping over her own feet as the door got closer, and closer, and didn’t stop running until the door was right in front of her. The metal shone in the now hot sun, and the wall was so tall that she couldn’t see if anything lay on the other side it. She dropped the rucksacks to the ground and pressed her hands against the metal to prove to herself that it was real, and that she’d made it, and that she’d saved him. Despite the sun, the wall was cool to the touch.

“I did it,” she said, her breathing heavy. “Screw your damn test.  _ I did it.” _

And with all of the energy that victory gave her, she yanked the door open, and was instantly enveloped in bright white light.


End file.
